Report from the Field – GatorMOG’s Spring Noggin – St Petersburg Yacht Club Motor Classic
Lois Slavin and Mike Palfreyman organized and hosted GatorMOG in St Petersburg, FL on 4-6 February 2023. St Petersburg Yacht Club (SPYC) Motor Classic is an all marque car show held along the water adjacent to the Yacht Club. They chose Morgan as the featured marque in 2023, after some prodding by Lois and Mike.
GatorMOG, with a little help from the greater MOGSouth membership showed up in force. We had 21 Morgan cars on the field for judging. A few medical and mechanical mishaps precluded us from having more! Augmenting the expected Florida GatorMOG Morgans were cars from Ohio, Alabama, and Georgia.
Even the Tampa Bay Automobile Museum brought out their 1930 Morgan Aero three wheeler to join us. A big thank you to all that participated! I am sure you would agree it was a great show and a great Morgan display!
The weekend started with a fully catered affair and cocktail party Friday evening at our hosts 5th floor penthouse overlooking Tampa Bay. The edible offerings were tremendous with all sorts of wonderful hors d’oeuvres . . . crab cakes and wontons and other enticements. And the view of the bay was simply mesmerizing!! Forecasts of dire weather seemed to wane as the weekend went along. It was rumored that a SPYC member even went so far as to bring in a Chinese ‘weather balloon’ to influence the weather.
The Meet Hotel(s) (the Hollander and the Avalon) were accommodating albeit a bit quirky. The restaurant was good and the bar better. They seemed quite crowded all weekend (must be popular?) and they were certainly convenient to the show field!
Morgan award winners included Brian and Rosie Miller, Keith Kasen and Rick and Sam Frazee. Lovely cars and awards well deserved! Congrats!!
Also, we’d like to congratulate the SPYC and its new Motor Classic Chairman Andy Evans for a very successful show! The car count was something over 225 cars of all types – Vintage, Modern, European and American. Thank you to all the SPYC volunteers who were there with a smile and always ready to help.
And of course, a huge thanks to Lois Slavin and her husband Mike Palfreyman for hosting this wonderful Morgan gathering! Without Lois’s original idea for the Morgan class at the show and hard work to keep the information flowing there would not have been a Morgan class. Again, thank you!
An amazing weekend and a wonderful show. This was a MOGSouth and GatorMog event that will be hard to beat!
Rick Frazee and Mark Braunstein
Would not recommend this hotel to anyone. ( -5 out of 10 ).Bottom of the hotel chain.
Dirty, no closet, poor lighting, bathroom smaller than a closet, mould, paint coming off the walls. No room in restaurant until after 8-9:00 pm both Saturday & Sunday and parking was a real challenge. The car event at the yacht club was first class with both breakfast and lunch and just a wonderful display of terrific cars from 1931 Lincoln to 1963 T-Bird, Ferrari, hot rods, 1929 Ford Woodie and many more. Congratulations to all the volunteers. Saturday night cocktail party was first class thank you Lois and Mike just wonderful location and food & drink.